Veolia Water implements integrated telephony data system

Veolia Water is looking to implement a single integrated computer telephony system capable of capturing all data in its call centre.

The water and wastewater management firm, which receives around one million calls a year in its 200 employee call centre, is in the process of developing a computer telephony integration (CTI) framework with Intelecoms in what it said will deliver a "totally integrated" operation.

The aim is to enable the capture of all essential customer and agent data, building upon the existing PULSE system, which includes workforce optimisation software. In practice this involves a skills-based routing facility whereby a phone operative's skills are matched with the needs of the caller. In addition to this the company said the CTI framework will be applied to speech analytics and customer feedback.

For Veolia this is the latest development in its use of cloud-based technology, having installed a system in 2005 to replace its previous telephony-based private branch exchange (PBX) system. Whereas in the past customers would hear an engaged or dead tone when lines reached their maximum capacity, the current IT queues calls in the cloud. According to the company's analysis, this resulted in abandoned calls dropping from an average of 7 per cent to 2.8 per cent.

David Gray, resource and planning analyst at Veolia Central, said: "We found the original telecommunications infrastructure increasingly restrictive, simply because technology had moved on. Effectively, I was the cloud, having to physically monitor, distribute and diverts calls myself to various workgroups. The time had come to consider automation as a more proactive means to deliver an enhanced customer experience."

The company has also recently deployed Intelecom's Broadcast module, which permits operators to make a call out to a pre-defined list of numbers. Information, such as billing details, can be read by an automated message, freeing up phone operators to receive more inbound calls, Gray added.